PCB Components

Strength of BOM Applications for Everything from Hobby Boards to Large Systems

Strength of BOM Applications for Everything from Hobby Boards to Large Systems I’m currently building a new tool shed and I was fortunate enough to find some plans for exactly what I need. Or at least I thought that I was fortunate until I started noticing some errors in the plans. At one point it instructed me to cut two door headers to a precise measurement, but that measurement was wrong and the headers ended up too short for assembly. I must confess, I may have uttered a few choice words concerning those shed plans on Read Article

How PCB Library Organization Expands Design Capabilities

How PCB Library Organization Expands Design Capabilities A popular children’s cartoon featured a superhero called the “Masked Retriever” who had a real job as an ordinary librarian. In the pursuit of justice, the Masked Retriever left a bold checkmark as a calling card and pursued anyone with an overdue book. In one animated adventure, the Masked Retriever pursued the most powerful man in the region by horseback because he wouldn’t give up his book. Unlike the of the Masked Retriever, PCB libraries don Read Article

Creating a Bill of Material with PCB Design Software using Altium Designer

PCB Design Software: Creating a Bill of Material using Altium Designer You’ve done it, your printed circuit board is finished and ready for PCB assembly. The schematic is finalized, the layout is checked and approved and you are ready to get this thing built. To do that though, you need to create a bill of materials. Fortunately, we are long past the days where these documents were created by hand. Every CAD system out there will automatically create a bill of materials through some library or other process. But Read Article

PCB Component Data Management Resolved with Connected Component Applications

PCB Component Data Management Resolved with Connected Component Applications My mouth was watering as I picked up the box sitting on my front porch. Dinner would be ready in 20 minutes. I was so hungry, having just gotten home. The box contained recipe cards and ingredients for making dinners throughout the week. I put on my slippers, and I pulled a recipe card from the box. All the ingredients were there. This new meal delivery service was growing on me. I’d be eating dinner soon, with time to spare for needed downtime Read Article

Scaling, Not Sinking Your Electronics: BOM Management Advice

Scaling, Not Sinking Your Electronics: BOM Management Advice The most stressful part of owning a boat was when it came time to launch or recover it from the river. The boat was large and together with the trailer and truck, there was a lot of equipment to maneuver up and down the ramp without making any mistakes. If some kind of problem came up I would end up with the boat, the truck, or me sinking into the water. That sense of anxiety was very similar to the feelings I’ve experienced working with Read Article

7 Benefits of Bringing Additive Manufacturing In-House

7 Benefits of In-House Fabrication and Additive Manufacturing If you are like 98% of the PCB designers out there, you know what it can be like to run through the gauntlet of outsourcing a design to a third-party manufacturer to receive a prototype or two. The process is usually a little painful, often pricier than you’d have hoped, and leaves you waiting for longer than you’d expect. I often think that the manufacturing process is similar to going out to dinner at an overrated restaurant; you’ll wait on an Read Article

Choose Unified Symbols for Your PCB Prototype Design Documents

Choose Unified Symbols for Your PCB Prototype Design Documents I love spending hours at the bench soldering parts together and looking at the resultant signals they produce. It is satisfying to see the signals take shape on the oscilloscope as I refine each block. I’m surrounded by tools and equipment, little bits of wire and solder strewed from the invention process. Joining the beautiful mess are scattered components pulled from sample parts binders stored in the lab. Soon my prototype design will be ready Read Article

Inventors Should Spend Time Designing and Less Time Writing a Bill of Materials

Inventors Should Spend Time Designing and Less Time Writing a Bill of Materials There’s a beautiful sense of satisfaction that comes with building something great. You took the time to think through the concept, perfect your design, and translate your vision into a functional prototype. You’re driven to bring your product to market, but you don’t want to spend time worrying about documentation. Your bill of materials is like a recipe and a shopping list for your new product, all rolled into a single document. The bill of Read Article

Why You Need BOM Management Tools for PCB Design

Why You Need BOM Management Tools for PCB Design Although, I do not drive as much as I once did being on the road is still one of my most favorite activities. Not many things can equal the thrill and freedom that comes from being behind the wheel. Yet, there can be a great deal of difference in the experience depending on the vehicle you are driving. Almost any vehicle will perform the basic function of getting you from point A to point B, but there comes a time when basic is not enough. Moving Read Article

Electronic Product Life Cycle Management Avoids Unpredicted Application Results

Electronic Product Life Cycle Management Avoids Unpredicted Application Results Everyone has a smartphone these days. Well, everyone except my grandparents. They still use clamshell phones and perfectly happy with them. The rest of us have moved on to leaner and meaner communication devices. Eventually, the product life cycle for clamshell phones will end and they will be relegated to the history books. A look back through the history of technology reveals that no piece of technology can thrive forever. Project life cycle Read Article

In Your Altium Library, Multiple Part Symbols Ease Your Design Time

Creating Multiple-Part Symbols for a PCB in Altium Designer How to create multi-part components and symbols in Altium Designer^®. Build a symbol manually or use an advanced symbol generator to do the heavy lifting of symbol creation for you. Read Article

Expedite Cost Savings with Continually Updated BOM Pricing

Costed BOM: Expedite Cost Savings with Continually Updated BOM Pricing Knowing your market and providing supply for your customers is an art. Purveyors of commodities have long been negotiating with their clients to plan supply chain needs. Stock becomes more desirable as supplies diminish, especially if demand grows and the need is great. If need and demand remain robust, pricing holds and suppliers make money while offering fair deals to their customers. Electronic component vendors carefully plan their offerings Read Article

Ease the Pain of Your PCB Supply Chain Management with Intuitive Design Tools

Ease the Pain of Your PCB Supply Chain Management with Intuitive Design Tools Have you ever been writing something and can’t figure out how to spell a word so you rephrase the entire sentence in order to use a different word? As much as replacing a word can kill your creativity in writing, it is much worse when you have to replace a component while designing electronic circuits. It happens a lot though when you aren’t connected to your supply chain management design. Problems like these can kill your creativity and cause Read Article

Ducks in a Row: Process Control and Document Traceability in One Place

Ducks in a Row: Process Control and Document Traceability in One Place Louis Pasteur captured the essence of complicated endeavors when he stated that “fortune favors the prepared mind.” Don’t miss opportunities for excellence when faced with complex tasks. Designing and building printed circuit boards and their assemblies is a complex task, made up of many meticulous endeavors. You could say that unified PCA documentation and communication favors successful outcomes when building products. Document types and Read Article

Obsolescence Management of Electronic Components Throughout Product Lifetime

Obsolescence Management of Electronic Components Throughout Product Lifetime I know what you’re thinking. Why can’t my manager automate a process for obsolescence management of electronic components? It would be nice to have one database compatible with each user’s software. Until then, I’ve set up weekly meetings so stakeholders can collect germane information about components into a common spreadsheet. It has been working but I would like to automate with software that all departments can use effectively. Let’s face it Read Article

Using Platform Unification Removes Need for BOM Analysis

Using Platform Unification Removes Need for BOM Analysis One of my friends laments that her husband has three versions of the same flat-head screwdriver. He doesn’t put his tools away so when he goes looking for a flat-head screwdriver, he can’t find one let alone three. Rather than spend his day looking for the lost tool, he conveniently drives to the hardware store and buys another. Enterprise databases are prone to the same redundancies, that’s why BOM analysis is important. Over time, designers Read Article

pcb cost estimate

Designing to Meet a Target BOM Price and PCB Cost Estimate Creating an accurate PCB cost estimate for design, components, production, assembly, shipping, and even firmware can be a challenging task for new designers. Even established organizations can have trouble getting it right as it's hard to anticipate every problem that can arise during a design. Manufacturers can help you handle the production and assembly portion of a project, but any time a new design needs to be put into production, components Read Article